you have to be a little bit crazy to survive

Feb. 23rd, 2014

Feb. 23rd, 2014

I was apparently living with other people and had gotten a Kickstarter game in the mail which someone else had opened (rude much?). The game was called Plague, and it came with at least two books for rules and story background, one of which was a board book with game board elements that could be removed from it somehow. I didn't get that far because I was trying to find all the pieces of the game that had been spread out by whoever opened it.

The art style of the game was sort of art deco / noir in shades of dark orange, brown, and black. The illustrations were cartoony but in that high-class sort of Americanized anime way (think Batman the Animated Series but even more art deco). The premise of the game had something to do with a dinner party at a rich mansion, and player characters possibly ending up dying of different plague-based diseases, one of which could create zombies from the corpses. I finally found the game box itself, which included a bunch of vaguely Barbie (or specifically Ken)-sized clothing, because part of the game was to search for clues and find as many pieces of the party host's clothes as you could, since he would disappear at some point in the game.

There were more small pieces of clothing near the box but I was uncertain if they were doll clothes from actual dolls, and not a part of the game. I was picking up some of those as well just in case when the dream changed to something unrelated.

Ah right, and earlier on in this dream (which was one big illogical mess), I'd received notice in the same day's mail of being awarded something that had to do with Shakespeare. There was a certificate and everything in a large envelope. It took me a while to figure out it was because I had donated money to some kind of Shakespeare thing online, and that the company/charity/whatever sent these things out to anyone who had donated.

Meanwhile, I have no real idea how Plague was put together to form a cohesive game... but I want it! Argh. XD

This may have started out as a video game but before long it was "real" and I was the player character, a female soldier with extensive firearms and combat training. I'm not entirely sure where the storyline was set, but my closest guess is post-apocalyptic Russia.

Sadly I don't remember much of it anymore, but I do remember progressing through stages where I had to explore and shoot my way towards a key location. One major problem was that something would happen that affected most people anywhere over a huge range of area at the same instant, and cause us to pass out. There were other operatives in the area, a few allies and a lot of enemies.

So basically, when the blackouts hit, sometimes my progress was reset a ways back, because someone who wasn't susceptible to the knockout had moved me (gee thanks). One time when I was getting somewhere important, a Russian female soldier or special operative captured me when I passed out. The dream continued to show me what was going on, in that the woman gave me an injection of some sort and was trying to examine me for signs of some kind of contamination.

I woke up and grabbed a pen, pointing it towards her threateningly while backing away. I found scissors, a much more useful weapon, but by then she was telling me to calm down and that she wasn't interested in a) killing me or b) dying, and could I just knock it off, thanks? I think I left that situation relatively peacefully, I only vaguely remember moving on from that point.

Finally I made it to the target location, a really wide, flat rooftop made of silver metal with some variation in elevation between sections. This place had something to do with the thing that was making almost everyone pass out. I was looking for clues as to what it was and if it was possible to turn it off so it would stop doing that. It started going off every few minutes, but now I would wake up again right after being knocked out, to the point that I was almost making it through the bursts.

(One of my real-life online friend's original characters) Kouri was also involved in the search, along with (my original character) Aster, and while I don't think I was friends with them I knew they could be trusted. Kouri I think was managing not to get knocked out at all, but Aster was far too weak and passed out every time. We were trying to spread out to cover more ground and figure out how to turn the damned thing off, and would randomly pass each other because we weren't having much luck.